An Unlikely Hero | MediEvil (Ep. 136) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game analysis podcast.
My name is Rick, and today we're talking about the
PS one cult classic Medieval. Before we dive in up top,
I have to thank the patrons. As always, it is
them that keeps the wheels of this train going, so
major thank you to all of the patrons. You want

(00:33):
to be like these fine folks and see what patrons
can reap from their sewing, you can do so at
www dot patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio, notably
not the app if you're an iPhone user. That's an
important thing to note. As of now with me, I
have a returning guest to the show, co host of

(00:53):
the three D podcast, We've Got Thrack.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Thrack, thanks for joining me, man, Hi, Rick, thanks for
having me back. We're not doing a seventy long hour
RPG this time. Instead, we're doing something a lot shorter
and more concise and something PlayStation which being an Xbox guy,
it makes perfect sense for me. But thank you for
having me back. I'm doing just fine, Rick, how are
you doing.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm good, man, I'm good. Yeah. This is closer to
the episode we did on Blinks, which, if you're a patron,
you heard that that's a patron episode hasn't been released
to the main feed. A little bit closer to that.
If you've been around with the show for any length
of time and you're familiar with this game, you might
be thinking, this doesn't This sounds like a strange game

(01:39):
for this show to do. And you're right. I programmed
this game. You're ready for this. You're not gonna believe this.
Because I liked it as a kid, that's it. And
nostalgia has its dirty, dirty grips on me. That's why
I programmed this game. I have very fond memories of
playing this at my cousin's house. I had Medieval Too
as a kid, not one, but I played one a

(02:01):
lot at my cousins. I played two at home. I
used to love this series and I wanted to revisit
it on the show. Was talking with thrac about what
he maybe wanted to do coming back, and he saw
this and he said, let's do that, and I said
all right, and we did it, and there we are
here we are.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, I'm pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
It's true. That's why we like you. So that was
kind of my history. I got my history out of
the way pretty quickly. Durak. Do you have any history
with Medieval? Did you play this as a kid or
is this your first time visiting this franchise.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
I have zero history with this game. The main character
in this was it in that PlayStation All Stars Battle
Royale thing for PS three, see it was. That's probably
where I first saw him and went, huh, that's a
weird looking character. I think just over the years it
eventually like you know, you spend your time just looking

(02:53):
through you know, video game history, you know Wikipedia, deep
dives and all that stuff. That's probably how I discovered
Medieval and looking at occasional YouTube clips, I'm like, oh,
that's an interesting looking game for the PS one.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
That might be something worth playing at some point, And.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
This was the opportunity for me to finally sit down
and play it because I didn't play a lot of
PS one back in the day, so a lot of
that library is very foreign to me.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
And as far as PlayStation classics go, this is one
of the fore bearers. It was. I remember this game
being really popular back in the day. It's one of
the earlier three D action games. It's kind of a mixture. Well,
I don't know if Hack and Slash is the right word,
but it's closer to an adventure Zelda game, but it's
three D. It's kind of hack and slash ish. There's

(03:40):
a little bit of that DNA in there, but we'll
talk all about it. I liked this more than I
was expecting, but I was done with it before the
credits rolled. I think that's a pretty decent way to
put it. I agree. Before we get into some history
with this game, we do actually have a community post.

(04:01):
If you're new to the show. The Community Forum is
a channel on the Discord server which I encourage you
to join. It's free, it's a good time, and every
week every month I put up what we're talking about
on the show and folks can chime in if they
want their thoughts read on the show, as a point
of discussion, a discussion springboard, or if they just want
to hear their their own unique voice on the show.

(04:22):
Sometimes that's enough for folks. And we actually do have
a response here. This is from Matt storm Ageddon, very
frequent responder and the community community forum and co host
of the Fun and Games podcast. Here's what Matt has
to say. This is a game that I love, the vibe,
story and humor of but playing it isn't always joyous.

(04:42):
Even the remake just has such awkward controls and ridiculous
difficulty spikes which might have been intentional but make it
hard to go back to. Yeah, you know, one of
the things Thrack and I figure this is probably something
we're going to end up talking about quite a bit.
One of the things that I was thinking of while
playing this was just the notion of development, the notion

(05:04):
of progression in terms of game development philosophy and game
development technical capacity, technical limitations, and how far it's come.
I mean, this game, if we're putting ourselves in the
lens of nineteen ninety eight, this is a very I mean,
it's a good game, right, I mean, what they did
with what they had at the time was really nice.

(05:24):
It is difficult to go back to. It has shown
its age quite a bit. I can't personally speak to
the remake. I've only played the first level of it.
But a lot of the things that this game is
doing that cause friction today have just fallen out of
fashion or have been improved with like technical leaps and
technical growth in terms of coding and programming and stuff

(05:46):
like that. But awkward controls, ridiculous difficulty, spikes, and just
a difficult playing experience. I think some of this game's
flaws pretty well.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, now when you say the remake, are you talking
specifically about the PS four remake, because this game does
have another remake.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
It does on PSP. There is a PSP I don't know,
is that a It sounds like you know what you're
talking about, which is a little more accusatory than I
wanted it to sound. But is that I thought the
PSP game was a like a separate entry and not
a remake of this game.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, from what I know, the Medieval Resurrection on PSP
it's seen as like a quote unquote reimagining, which I
guess falls under the remake category. Where you know, when
they were making games for the PSP, they probably were like,
let's see if we can do this one again, but
for you know, this type of platform, and it's one

(06:43):
of those PSP games that surprisingly didn't get a ps
two port. There's a lot of PSP games that got
PS two ports. It's a whole interesting deep dive. But
but yeah, like I didn't really know about the PSP one,
so I started doing research for this. I knew about
the PS four remake because I think when that came
out there was a bit of advertising around it and
those cult fans being excited that like, oh, Medieval's back, baby,

(07:06):
Sir Daniel, He's risen from the grave for like the
third time or whatever. Yeah, but I agree a lot
with Stormygedton's takes on it and even yours as well,
and that it's a very interesting game to look at.
You know, there's something about it the way, like sort
of the way it's designed or the way it's presented

(07:27):
is in a way that, like a lot of games
aren't really done anymore, and there is probably some nostalgia
about that, maybe not necessarily for the game, but for
the time. But the act of playing the game is
a much more different experience.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
And that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Even in nineteen ninety eight, there were other games that
I think play a lot better even by today's standards,
than Medieval, But I think Medieval's probably more of an
accurate representation of how games were made back then.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Oh absolutely, yeah, man, I mean, so this was done.
We'll get into this here in just a second, but
this was done wasn't done by a huge studio at
the time, So of course there were there were entries
on the PlayStation that we're doing this a little bit better.
But all things considered, I think this is really successful.
Now you had mentioned the PS four remake. This did

(08:20):
get a fresh cone of paint, coat of paint completely
remade for the PS four. It is very faithful. The
levels are completely the same and for better or for worse,
and this is again I've only played the first level
of this. For better or for worse, the combat and
all of the mechanics are the same too. Now I

(08:41):
will preface by saying there's one specific complaint that I
have that may have been fixed in the remake, but
I just I can't remember. I haven't played the remake
for a very long time. It may have been fixed,
I don't know. We'll talk about it. But let's let's
get into how this was developed. It was released in,

(09:19):
as we both said, nineteen ninety eight, October of ninety
eight appropriate for this game for a couple of reasons.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Spooky, yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Got that vibe to it. The full credits you can
find on the wiki, the IMDb, or you could just
beat the game. But of note, this was developed by
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. This actually came out in Europe
a few days earlier than here. That is the US,
because I apparently think that the US is just central
to the world. I'm a typical American. This is published

(09:47):
by Sony Computer Entertainment, directed and produced by Chris Sorel, Design,
art and writing by Jason Wilson, with an additional writing
credit by Martin Pond. Composers This is interesting composers Andrew
Barnabas and Paul Arnold, who are better known as a
duo Bob and barn Have you heard of Bob and

(10:09):
barn before Threk? I have not, me neither, and I'm
a little bit surprised because this was a little bit funny.
So I do I start all of the basic research
on the wiki because you know, it's convenient, generally somewhat accurate,
and then you go from there right and on the wiki,
Andrew Barnabas and Paul Arnold, they both had blue links,

(10:30):
so I was like, oh, okay, they're important composers. Let's
see what else they've done. Well, it just linked to
the music section of Medieval so I was like, okay,
time to go to their website. I looked up their website.
You're not going to believe this, man, Like, not only
do they do like concert performances and they've done film stuff,
but just for games. They've got credits on Crisis Forts,
a motorsport, for Brink and an Xbox game that I

(10:55):
weirdly have affection for, Kung Fu Chaos.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Oh, Kung Fu ke that's the the OG Xbox game, right,
I think it was done by Is that Ninja Theory
that did that one?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I remember playing that game a lot in the OG
Xbox demo kiosks, you know, back in the day when
you had to break your neck to play games at
a Walmart.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
I remember, I remember.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I still have not gotten that from my OG Xbox collection,
but I've been meaning to hunt it down.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
It's not expensive, I've got it, and it's it's still
pretty fun to play. I was shocked they have some
serious credits behind their names, you know, and I had
just never heard of them before. We'll talk about the
music when we get there in a little bit. I
was a little bit surprised with it, to be honest
with you, but uh, medieval, coming back to it. This
began development under the code name of dead Man Dan,

(11:46):
which you know, I don't know. It's it's a good name,
and it was.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
It's a pirate kind of a.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Name, isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, I guess so, I guess.
So it was supposed to be a combination of ghosts
and goblins meets Nightmare before Christmas, So, in other words,
not at all the game that we got in this case,
I think it worked out.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
You can see a little bit of ghost and Goblin's
influence now that you mention it, because I hadn't thought
of it, I'm like, I could see the influence a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, I suppose so, I suppose so the Nightmare before Christmas, definitely,
that is definitely an influence here. You can see that
in the art style. It eventually morphed into something closer
to Zelda, like an adventure Zelda game. There are traversal
puzzles is a little bit of a strong word, but
I mean kind of. There are adventure puzzles. You have

(12:35):
to find objects to that are keys that will progress
you through the level. You get power ups in the
form of weapons to help you progress. Things like that
all the better. One trademark of this game. One thing
that this game is known for is it's got a
bit of a humor. You know, it's not your mother's medieval.

(12:55):
They do things a little differently around here. They're a
little quirky. They're a little twisted.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, it's a little quirky.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
I don't know if I would rate the humor in
the same way that you are, but you know it
fits with you know, like the like if you've ever
seen The Nightmare before Christmas, it has almost that kind
of level of humor to it.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, I'm I'm just dicking around. This isn't the kind
of like, yeah, we're a little twisted over here. It's
not that kind of humor. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's no
there's no swearing in this game. It's just a little
it's just goofy, you know, it's it's a little silly.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Goofy's a good way to describe it.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, they're not afraid to get a little silly. It
wasn't planned to be like part of the ethos of this,
but they said that it just kind of developed naturally
because the team described themselves as youthful and silly, and
they said they liked horror movies and comedy movies and
that's a duo horror and comedy movies that come together
very frequently, and the goofiness and silliness just kind of happened. Honestly,

(13:55):
I think that makes this game all the better, Like
it kicks it up a few notches for me. If
this were just a straight put serious kind of three
D adventure action adventure game, I don't think it would
have worked as well for me.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
And what's interesting is, like the main designer, Chris Sorewell,
he was known before this for making the James Pond
series of games. I don't know if you're familiar with
James Pond, but James Pond it was a series on
like say, it was on the Genesis and the Amiga,
and that was meant to be like a weird parody
of James Bond. And it also has like a silly,

(14:31):
goofy presentation to it as well, So it makes sense
that it's kind of carried over into this game. Like
I believe in the first James Pond, the enemy is
doctor maybe, which is a play on a doctor.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
No.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I have not heard of James Pond. I'm very interested
in checking that out. We mentioned you had mentioned that
you see the Nightmare Before Christmas influence on this I
had mentioned it. Let's talk a little bit about how
this game looks, how it's presented. It very much has
Tim Burton written on it. It doesn't have that kind

(15:05):
of claymation feel that Tim Burton movies do. Nightmber Before
Christmas kind of like, I mean, it's not claymation, but
it kind of is. This doesn't have that, maybe partly
because you know PS one three D they had mentioned
in the development that that caused them a lot of
headaches that developing this for three D, just because it
was you know, it was early in gaming, so they

(15:27):
were having difficulties with that this was a new horizon.
But you can see it in terms of the color palette.
It's a lot of purples and reds for important characters
and places, purples, red, silvers and blacks, a lot of
cauldrons and witches, a lot of like pumpkins and gourds, scarecrows,

(15:49):
things like that. You can totally totally see it music too,
but we'll get there in a second.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, the visuals, it very much evokes kind of that
spoon nature with like kind of the like very vibrant colors,
but they're also like really dark, so everything's kind of
allowed to get even more exaggerated at certain points.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, vibrant and dark is a good way to put it.
They're not I mean, they're not vibrant in the same
way that like Mario is. I mean that's and maybe
I just have Mario on the brain because we just
released the Mario episode today. But I think it's maybe
a mixture of vibrant and muted. I mean, those those
are kind of antonyms. But I maybe that paints a

(16:32):
better picture. It looks like it could be painted. I
don't know. Maybe that makes sense to some people. It
makes sense to me, But.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
I could I could see very Yeah, I could see
it like it is saturated where it needs to be.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
I thought the level designs were mostly pretty intuitive and
pretty good. There were a couple that I did not
like at all, but most of them. You know, you're
going around these levels killing the enemies to fill up
your child that's important to get upgrades, and going through
the levels requires you mostly to get ruins. Ruins will

(17:10):
ruins Ruins are you andy ruins to They function as
keys to open doors, and you'll have a couple per
each level, sometimes one, sometimes more. They help you get
through doors. This game rewards exploration basically, it's it's a requirement,
but it also rewards it because these chalices that you're collecting,
those are optional and they are what gets you better

(17:32):
weapons and upgrades like that. I like the levels. I
liked some of the end one significantly less. There was
one that I think is truly genuinely bad, and I
don't I don't think it's optional. Is the anti optional?

Speaker 3 (17:46):
I don't think it was.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
It's weird because there's certain things in the game that
are optional, but I feel like the game doesn't do
a great job of letting you know what is and
isn't optional. You just kind of like you just keep
going until you kind of run into, say like a
brick wall, and then you're like, oh, I need to
go do this thing, so then you go back and
do it. At least that was the majority of my
experience with it.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. There's not a lot of guide
reils in this game. You're really left to your own devices,
and that's I mean, we're talking about design philosophies. At
the time that was in the water, there were a
lot of games that just you know, put you in
the sandbox and said go ahead. And I think, you know,
part of that comes from this game is not super long,

(18:32):
but their need. They wanted probably some padding so you
felt like you got your money's worth, and maybe that's
part of it. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's very It reminds me a lot of Mario sixty
four because when I was reading about this game, it
was listed as kind of an influence on it as
it was being made. And yeah, I can kind of
see that influence. I mean, when Mario sixty four came out,
it kind of made everybody go, oh, that's what we
should do, and there were a lot of games that
were trying to do it Medieval. It's not a sixty

(19:00):
four clone or anything like that, but sort of the
open it in nature that a lot of the levels have,
and sort of the kind of half required half not
like backtracking and going back. I can see some Mario
influence in that, I mean, as well as like you know,
Zelda as well, but Zelda was doesn't have like the
set levels. It's like more kind of just the big

(19:21):
open areas that you explore. But I mean this game
started development I think it was in ninety five. So
I could imagine, say, like a year in development, they
play Mario sixty four and they're like, we got it,
that's what we should do, and then you know, probably
change course a little bit after that.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, I don't that's so interesting. I believe you. I
believe that Super Mario sixty four had an influence on them,
because it had an influence on everything. I just, man,
I don't see it. I don't see it in like anything.
It's not this game doesn't play nearly as expressively. It's
the level design isn't to that level. I mean it's fine,

(19:58):
but it's not to that level. And of course the camera,
well the camera in Mario sixty four isn't exactly great
shakes either, but the camera here, that's one of the
two things coming to this in twenty twenty five that
I found to be really bothersome. This game was made
to accommodate the dual shock the analog controller for PlayStation,

(20:19):
and that's great, that's really cool. You can use the
left analog stick. The right analog stick is inactive, though,
which is fine. I mean, camera controls on the shoulders.
That was just what you did back then. Not very
many actually, I don't know if any games use the
right stick, but coming to this in twenty twenty five,
it would have been so nice because the camera was

(20:40):
my enemy a lot of the time.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Like this is definitely an era where three D games
are still new, so they weren't quite sure how to
make the camera work, you know, and Mario tried with
the C buttons and the result is kind of mixed
even to this day. And yeah, there were a lot
of games even into the PS two era that we're
using L two and R two for the camera, like
Kingdom Hearts one comes to mind. There were games that
were using the right stick for camera, but it was

(21:04):
still like a very new thing at the time. Famously,
there's a game called Alien Resurrection on the PS one
that is one of the first examples of the modern
first person controls where you move with the left stick
and aim with the right stick, and it was criticized
back then for that style of control, but has aged
very gracefully. And yeah, Medieval kind of is sticking with

(21:24):
that idea of using L two and R two for
the camera, and it would be fine if the camera
did a better job of positioning itself to where you
wouldn't get lost because there were so many times where
I was playing the game where the camera would just
kind of swoop around in front of Daniel for some reason. Yeah,
and then I'm like trying to walk forward because that's

(21:47):
where I need to progress. So I'm walking towards the camera,
and I'm trying to move the camera around to his
back so I can see what I'm looking at all
while like enemies are attacking me. And it's very like
this era kind of jankiness that it's crazy to think
we put up with this at the time, but we
didn't know any better.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Right right exactly, And for that reason, it's hard to
fault this game for it. Again, That's what I kept
coming back to playing this is just thinking about how
far we've come, and you know, viewing this through its
twenty twenty five lens, it would be totally unfair and
meaningless and trite and shallow to say, well, the camera
kind of sucks and there's no lock on mechanic, which,

(22:29):
for the record, a lock on There is a lock
on mechanic, isn't there. I yes, I misspoke. A lock
on mechanic is there, but there's no manual lock on button,
which is one thing that I really really really wish
this game had. But yeah, especially for some of the bosses,
especially for some of the everything, because yeah, what this

(22:50):
does the lock on mechanic being automatic and just kind
of left up to the system to assume what you want,
along with the camera kind of just doing whatever it
wants in tight environments. It leads to this franticness of
play where instead of fighting like a night that Sir
Daniel Fortescue is, you're kind of just running around a lot,

(23:12):
just running around in circles, just pecking away at enemies.
Just hit hit, run around in circles, hit hit. And
that wasn't super fun for me. That was that actually
kind of sucked for me.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, it wasn't fun for me either.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
I Mean, I can enjoy hack and slash games, but
I think they have to have much better like hit
detection than this game does, or at least better ways
of showcasing the player that your hits are connecting, because
there would be so many times I would like mash
the attack button on an enemy and it just didn't
look like I was doing any damage to them, and

(23:45):
then they would just kind of magically die, and it's like, oh, well,
I guess this worked out. You know, it wasn't very
satisfying as far as like the combat was concerned, Like
none of it really felt enjoyable to fight anything like
the traversal in the player that forming was perfectly fine,
but I don't know, the combat did leave a lot
to be desired for me.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, yeah, I'm in total agreeance with you there. But
speaking of the combat, and we're kind of talking about
how the game plays, why don't we go ahead.

Speaker 6 (24:12):
And just talk about mechanics.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
I have written here that movement and aiming are kind
of the biggest enemies in the game. But again, it
was early three D, so like, yeah, we could say
that in jest but also kind of seriously. But then again,
we can't judge them with a twenty twenty five rubric.
It's not fair. I worked for the time. Coming back
to it, Yeah, like Matt said, it's a little clumsy,
it's a little you know, growing pains have happened. We're

(24:54):
better off for it.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
But even if you compare it to say, other games
that were coming out around the same time, like this
same year, I think Banjo Kuzui came out, and I
think that game controls far and away better than Medieval,
does you know, just comparing them side by side. So,
but to be fair, I think Medieval is just I think,
as I had said earlier, it's far more representative of

(25:15):
games that were made back then where three D U yeah,
as we said, was still very new and they were
still trying to figure out how to do it very well.
Like it wasn't really in the till the PS two
era where people kind of figured it out, and even
then there were still some issues with it also too.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
The two games that you listed were by developers that
worked with Nintendo.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
And I'm just gonna come out and say this, I
don't really consider myself an authority when talking about gaming history.
I'm good at looking at the medium, like the art,
the piece that we're looking at, and talking about it.
I'm not a historian. However, it seems to me at
this time three D controls were just dominated by Nintendo,
like nobody else could compare. I'm thinking of like you know,

(25:55):
PS one had this, this game that Evil was also
considered for a time for Sega Saturn. So I'm thinking
of Sega Saturn, I'm thinking of Bug, I'm thinking of
Kroc you know Crock, which was also on PS one.
These are also three D games that just you know,
going back to them, I like those games just fine,
but playing them is a little bit trifling, you know,

(26:16):
it's it's I mean trifling.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's a little bit different, a little trifling. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, if you want to stick with PS one.
I mean at the same time, we were getting Crash
Bandicoot and Spiro. Yeah, and those games. Yeah, and crash
band I mean, Crash Bandicoot in a lot of ways
is just a two D platformer you play from a
three D perspective, but that's kind of a clever way

(26:38):
they were able to add the Z axis to to
make it three D. And then you know, Spira with
the Dragon was to me, I think making strides in
what three D platformers could be like, even going beyond
say what Nintendo was doing, Like I think the early
Spiro games have aged incredibly well. Oh yeah, and those
are on the PlayStation as well, so there were definitely

(26:59):
strides being made on this platform as well, not just Nintendo.
But and again, like the original Spiro was ninety eight,
I think Crash was on Warped by ninety eight, so
like people were starting to figure it out. But I
think the issue with Medievals that it was being made
in nineteen ninety five is when it started development, So
probably by the time they got to nineteen ninety eight,

(27:20):
there were other games that maybe started development later and
got out quicker, that were doing much more advanced things
than it, you know, like because back then three four
years in game time in game development met a lot
more than it does now. You know, like a game
from three years ago, it might as well have come
out today like it, like you know what I mean,

(27:41):
Oh yeah, totally, I.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Agree with you. Another thing, too, is like Spiro's Ethos
is all on collecting and platforming, probably in that order. Yes,
Crash is platforming. This medieval The driving forces behind it
that make it up are exploration of the level and
dealing with it enemies like enemies are a key part
of this, which you know, and I'm thinking of this too.

(28:04):
I'm watching a let's play of this on mute while
we're recording. I'm thinking back to the developers talking about
their arcade influences for this game and how at first
they kind of considered it one an arcade game. I mean,
ghosts and goblins, and so I think the running around
dealing with enemies like that, rather than locking in for combat,
you know, and doing the combat and then exploring the level.

(28:27):
I think what we have here just exploring while also
running around and dealing with enemies and just you know,
trying to keep yourself afloat. That reminds me a lot
of the Arcade days. And I can see that influence.
So it's probably what they were going for. And you know,
at the time, sure, fine, I hate to say it, man,
I really hate to say it. I hate what I'm

(28:48):
about to say. This would kind of work as like
a Soul's like game Wherever to get remade again.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
You know, I kind of see it write exactly what
Sean about. I mean, to be fair, I kind of
found this game difficult, like already, and it was just
because of how kind of clunky it can control and
the way the enemies just can kind of charge at
you and do crazy amounts of damage, you know, more
than I was expecting. And I found myself dying way

(29:17):
more than I expected to, you know. And I'm not
trying to say like I'm amazing at games, but like
it's just the difficulty in this game was surprising to me,
you know, but I could see the souls like thing,
like there is something kind of soulsy about like the setting,
and there's just something there that I think it could

(29:39):
work if they wanted to do it, almost like like
a weird mixture of like Bloodborne and another Crabs Treasure
like somewhere in that spectrum could be a medieval game.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
I think it would be successful, I really do. You
had mentioned getting rushed by enemies. The difficulty does spike up,
but one thing that helps mitigate that is the collection
of weapons. You typically get new weapons, actually exclusively, I
think by defeating all of the enemies in a level,
and with each enemy you defeat, your chalice percentage increases.

(30:13):
The chalice is hidden in each level, and you can't
collect it until your chalice is at one hundred percent.
You fill that up by killing enemies. You can find it.
If it's not complete, you just can't pick it up,
and once you complete it, after the level's finished, there's
an exit for every level. You leave, you go to
the Hall of Heroes, which is sort of like Valhalla.
You're a dead man, you go to the Hall of

(30:33):
Heroes to reclaim your right to be there, and each
time you do that, generally it's every other time you
get a weapon, and then in between those you get
like a gold or maybe sometimes a health vial or
things like that. But that's how you get your weapons
you start off with. I actually kind of like this.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
You start off with a sword, yes, but you can
also tear off your arm and use it as a
club or as like a boomerang, which is pretty sweet.
I discovered that accidentally, and I really liked that, Like
it kind of gave the game a little bit of
character that it needed in the gameplay department, you know,

(31:12):
because for how much character this game has visually and
like just aesthetically, I feel like the gameplay needed some
of that to help it. And I think being able
to use your arm as a weapon is actually like
really cool, and I kind of wish they had built
upon that maybe more, with say the environmental puzzles or
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
It's very neat. It's it's much slower than the other projectiles,
so it's nice to have it as a sort of
fallback plan if you ever run out of throwing daggers
or crossbows, crossbow bolts or whatever. You always have something
that's a ranged weapon, which is important because ranged combat
is a key part of this. You will be fighting bats,

(31:52):
you will be fighting enemies at a distance, and you
need something that can throw it a range. That's where
the lock in mechanic comes in that I had mentioned
it kind of ought targets wherever you're looking. It doesn't
always work super well, just a real pain and a constant,
a constant cause of me wasting knives and arrows. But
let's talk weapons for a second. What weapons were you

(32:14):
rocking here?

Speaker 7 (32:14):
What did you like to play most of the time
I was using the I think it was the hammer
because at a certain point when you get the hammer,
there are like certain enemies that like you first you
get a sword, right, and the sword is perfectly fine
when you first get it, but you can't really use
it for a lot of say the smaller enemies.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
You know, it's almost like a.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Throwback to the Arcade two D stuff where they would
put a lot of enemies that were on the ground
but you couldn't crouch or like hit them like you're
facing down. So the game gives you a hammer and
its main attack is being able to smash things. You
know that are on the ground, and I found myself
using that an awful lot just because of how effective
it was in combat. And it's weird the game gives

(32:59):
you two different attack buttons, but I feel like there's
not a huge amount of difference between them, Like the
main difference is the secondary attack. You can charge it
up and use it to like you know, almost create
like a shock wave with say the hammer, which I
found very effective in certain areas, but that's what I
was using more just kind of out of efficiency.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
I mean, I liked using the sword, but it feels
especially when you get the more powerful sword later, but
I feel like it wasn't doing as much damage as
I would have liked it to have done.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, the hammer is definitely much better. That's what I
use most too, that shockwave. I actually like the two
button system. You trade off efficiency, or you trade off
quickness and speed of use with charging it up. But
when you charge up the hammer, like you said, you
deliver not only a blow, but a shock wave, which
can be really useful in some of the gauntlet levels

(33:51):
or with the sword, whether it's the short sword, the
broad sword, the magic sword, whichever one you're using. That
charging up of square lets you do like a z
out a spin attack, which you know, except since Dan
is a dead skeleton, he just spins from the waist
up while he's running, which is pretty cool. I like
that quite well, Yeah, I did like that.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Again, there were just there were a little bit of
quirky bits in this game that I that I really
really liked. I just I think it needed more of
that stuff.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Did you. Now, As far as weapons go, there's one
in this game that is just bizarre. Did you get
the drumstick?

Speaker 8 (34:24):
No?

Speaker 2 (34:25):
I never did. I mean, there's the club, but I'm
assuming the drumstick is different from that.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
The drumstick is a chicken drumstick, nice, and when you
get it, you only get one. And the reason that
is is because it's so powerful. You throw it and
it doesn't have great distance, but if an enemy picks
it up, they eat it and turn into a roast
chicken that Dan can then pick up and gain like
twenty health, So it's it's kind of broken, but you

(34:50):
only get one, and the only way to get it
without exploiting a bug is I think you get it
from collecting seven amber in the an Till level, and
if you want another, you have to do that again.
But there's a there's an exploit to get around this.
There are enemies in this game called imps, and they
steal your items, and that includes weapons, so they can

(35:10):
steal your sword, your shield, things like that. And if
you let them steal your drumstick, you can then buy
the stolen goods back. In each level, there's a little uh,
what do you call it, a gargoyle mask thing that
you can talk to. It's like a merchant, and if
one of the imps steals your items, you can buy

(35:31):
them back. It's kind of like a penalty if you
if you don't kill them to get it back. But
if you buy back the chicken drumstick, it gives you
thirty just I guess it's like a code thing. I
don't know, but you can exploit that to get thirty.
It's a broken weapon. I didn't I didn't do it
because the ant Hill level is shit. It is terrible.

(35:52):
I hate it so much, dude, it is. It is
the worst level in this game.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, some of the Pumpkin Gord levels I didn't like,
like some of the more like kind of Pumpkin Hill
levels I didn't care for but yeah, the Ann Hill
level was pretty.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Not great. Yeah, I think you're more passionate about hat.

Speaker 9 (36:12):
We can.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
We can maybe talk about our favorite and least favorite
levels when we get to like our playthrough experience. Because this,
I mean, there's not a lot of story to this.
We can talk about it, but we're not gonna go
beat by beat before we do that, though, Let's sit
on music for a second. Good old, good old Bob
and barring the Danny Elfman was a big influence on them,

(36:57):
and the devs actually told them like, yeah, this is
what we're looking for. We're looking for a Danny Elfman
kind of style nightmare before Christmas. You know, you can
totally hear it. Like as soon as I read that,
I said, oh my god, yeah, it's so obvious. There's
like I mean, yes, the spooky and Halloween affected sounds,
like the patches and the way they use strings. They
use the pitscato strings as a background that kind of

(37:21):
evolved into a string section as a basis of accompaniment clarinets.
There's lots of that in the melody. You can definitely
hear Elfman all throughout this. I actually, you know, man,
what did you think of the soundtrack. I never noticed
it when I was playing, but when I went back
to listen to it on YouTube, it's it's kind of good.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly no like Nightmare before Christmas
or you know, Batman Returns or even Oingo Boingo.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah yeah, but I freaking love Wingo Boingo.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
But oh dude, I ran into in the wild some
zoomers on TikTok discovering what's the It's the song Little
Girls by Oingo Boingo.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah, I think that's the one.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
This is kind of itchy. I don't I don't know
about this. It's like, oh my god, dude, kind of
I get why they would say that, you know, I understand, well, yes,
I mean if you're just looking at the lyrics, but like,
man read into it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, there's definitely there's definitely more to it.
But the older things get, the easier it is to
just kind of write it off as weird.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
And you know, the thing that I'm waiting for is
TikTok to the younger TikTokers to discover good Old Boys
by Randy Newman, specifically the song Rednecks. They're gonna hear
that and lose their minds.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
That's the thing he's talked about before, how he doesn't
play that song anymore because he's kind of afraid of
it being taken out of context. Yeah, and to be fair,
if you're just playing that song by itself, very easy
to misconstrued. But Randy Newman has always been misconstrued, and
I always felt like he kind of got off on that.
He enjoyed being misunderstood, you know, like like people freaked

(39:03):
out when Short People was a hit, Like they were
getting mad at him for it, and it's like, you
guys clearly don't understand the song.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
God, I love him so much. He's one of my
favorite musicians.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
A gem.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
I have his I have all of his albums, and
I have the little box set he did in the
nineties that's like a compilation of like like his soundtrack stuff,
B sides, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
It's really good. There's a there's a terrific line that
makes me laugh every time. I forget the name of
the song. Uh, but it is talking about, you know,
if Karl Marx were alive today. The world isn't fair?
Is the song?

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (39:40):
Really?

Speaker 1 (39:41):
And he's talking about how how you know how terrible
the times times are right now. And there's a line
where he says, if Karl Marx were alive today, he'd
be rolling in his grave. And I laugh every time.
I love that that little line. I use that line
all the time. Anyway, Randy Newman's great. This This has
been our Randy Newman podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Totally

(40:02):
do one, dude, I would love to I would love
to ah so much fun medieval music. It's totally Danny Elfman,
you can tell. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
And it was like with tim Burton, like they were
sort of the hot shit at the time, you know,
like this was really like peak Tim Burton era. Like
I'm really not the biggest Tim Burton fan. I think
he's he's overstayed his welcome, and I think some of
his fans can be kind of annoying. Oh dude, But
in this era, you know, like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissor Hands,

(40:32):
ed Wood, you know, like like he was making some
really high quality stuff.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
And even Danny Elfman.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
I think Danny Elfman has always been pretty solid as
far as his soundtracks go, so I totally get why
they were trying to go for that feel. And yeah,
It does a good job of sounding like Danny Elfman,
you know, like I wouldn't be surprised if somebody, you know,
just kind of assumed it was, especially because he did
so much work back then, and especially because Bob and
Barne like they know what they're doing, like they've got credentials.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
They're not just like people that the dev team knew.
They're proper they work in the field. One thing, you know,

(41:29):
this soundtrack doesn't try and make itself a main character,
and I think that's part of why I never really
noticed it while I was playing. It does a great
job of standing to the side and letting the levels
take up the space, letting the cut scenes take up
the space. That's one thing we didn't mention. At the
beginning of most levels, there's a little cut scene that
introduces it. I liked all of these. I thought these

(41:51):
were really nice. There aren't too many of them, so
it's not like they suffer from abundance, like there's too many.
They had to work on too many, just a short
little introduction of each. They're dark, they're kind of creepy,
but they're still kind of funny too. I like it.
They're all very good.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
They feel very of their time. And I mean I
could be I could be biased when they say this,
but they they feel like they wouldn't they would fit
on like three D Oero, you know, like like that
sort of mid nineties animation style with like the cut
scenes that they were doing.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Like when I was seeing I'm like, it has like
a three D zero niss to it.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
And I don't know if that's just my bias because
I play so many three DO games for my show,
but it just I don't know, Maybe I just think
in the nineties there was a lot of this stuff.
But yeah, I always find that stuff charming and this
fits right in with that.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, I like it a lot. It's good. Is there
anything that we could talk about before we get into
the story and the general gameplay experience this game? Like,
I mean, listeners are probably keying in. This isn't a
super deep game, so I mean, we're not gonna have
loads and loads to talk about with the story. But
is there anything that we didn't get to that you

(43:01):
wanted to touch on?

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Threck One thing I found weird going back to like
the controls, was you have two different movement speeds, right,
you can walk and you can run, and how the
game is set up if you're using like a dual shock,
is the depad you can walk, and then the analog
stick you can run. Now, I was like, isn't there
a way to just do it with like the stick?

(43:23):
And I was, you know, looking some stuff up, and
they're like, oh, if you just push L three, you
can swap between them. But when I was playing the game,
I would try to push L three to switch between
walking and running because there were certain parts where I'm like,
it'd be better if I was walking instead of running
more for like platforming challenges, but it wasn't working and
I wasn't quite sure why. And the game has quite

(43:46):
a few different control options that you can like go through,
but like the menu system isn't very good, so like
it would say, oh, do you want control scheme one, two, three,
or four, but it wouldn't show me like the differences
in the control schemes. So it's just like I don't
know if two or three would be better and would
like solve my issue. But that was just one kind

(44:07):
of annoyance that I had, Like I found myself constantly
moving between the depad and the stick when I needed
to run or when I needed to walk, which I
just thought was kind of weird, and maybe they did
fix it. Maybe I'm just a dummy who couldn't figure
it out, but there's just something I wanted to note.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Well, you do need both, Like you said, some of
these platforming slash traversal challenges, you really do need to walk.
I played this on original hardware. I started using my
favorite PlayStation controller that I have is just one without
any sticks, no analog sticks, and it's red and all
the buttons feel great. But I started playing with that.

(44:42):
But to dash on a stick that doesn't on a controller,
if it doesn't have any sticks, you have to double
press a direction and then you'll dash as long as
you hold it down, which sucks to do for any
extended length of time. So I went right back to
a dual shot controller. I hadn't tried that. I just
kind of switched back and forth between dpad and analog

(45:04):
stick as needed. But you know, it's what else are
they going to do? They didn't know, and they didn't
know any better.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, it was very much a wild West with this,
with how they're making three D games back then, you know,
just trying to see what would work and uh, and
we the audience ended up being the guinea pig for
a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Which makes it interesting to go back to as well.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
You know, like, I think we're probably more willing to
accept some of this weird jank compared to some other people.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
I think so. I think so. But at the same time,
you know, I'm seeing a lot of younger folks get
into retro games, especially on like TikTok and YouTube, and
it's great to see.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, yeah, Like I like, I think playing those games
is really cool, you know, Like I don't want to
really get on the soapbox, but I find all of
gaming interesting, you know, from the early days of Pong
to right now. So you know, I just wish there
were and hopefully there will be more younger people like
us who just find the whole medium fascinating because it's

(46:06):
just such a it's a weird thing to do in general,
so why not see what it has to offer in
as much totality as you can? You know, well said, yeah,

(46:40):
all right, let's talk story slash play experience. So, as
I mentioned earlier, you are playing as Dan Fortescue. He
is a hero from the dead, and I went into
the instruction manual. I have this game sitting on my shelf.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
And there is a whole I love. When manuals used
to do this, they would give you a prelude sla.
The entirety of the story just written out in the
very front, and I've got that here and I'm going
to read it. This is the legend of Sir Daniel Fortescue.
Remember when games had manuals. I do, I do, and

(47:14):
I miss those times. I do too, all right, Joey,
can I get some music? Can we put some music on?
Thank you? The history books of Galimir tell Avihu Sir
Daniel Fortescue, who single handedly halted an invasion by the
zombie hordes of Zerok the Sorcerer. But then history books

(47:36):
are often known to lie for years. Daniel Fortescue had
regaled the nobles of Galomire with tales of slain dragons
and vanquished legions. King Peregrine was so impressed that he
made Daniel a knight and appointed him head of the
Royal Battalion. Of course, it was only an honorary post.
Galimir had not seen a war in many centuries, but

(47:56):
the king liked stories, and Sir Dan was an excellent storyteller.
But then evil Zarok, the mad Magician, returned from years
of exile, and bittered and filled with wrath, he threatened
to unleash an army of darkness that he had built
using the most sinister of magic. The king was in
desperate need of a hero and knew exactly who he wanted.
Sir Dan was thrust at the front of the King's

(48:18):
army to face a monstrous enemy. The battle commenced, and
within seconds Sir Dan fell to the ground, struck in
the eye with the very first arrow fired. His wound
was fatal, and the army was left to fight on
without him. Zarok's legions were defeated, but Zarak himself was
never found. Embarrassed by Sir Dan's poor show, and realizing

(48:38):
his subjects needed to feel safe, King Peregrine declared that
Sir Daniel Fortescue had died in mortal combat seconds after
killing the sinister wizard. A hero's tomb was erected for
Sir Dan, the history books inscribed with tales of his valor.
Zarok was soon forgotten, a lost character in history's plays,

(48:59):
but Zarah himself never forgot. He lay in hiding, creating
a bigger, stronger army of mutated monsters until one hundred
years later is scheming complete Zarok return and scene. I

(49:25):
would like to say I am available for your voice
acting needs. My rates are low because I don't know
what the hell I'm doing, but I'll do it.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Tell me these guys were playing a lot of D
and D without telling me a lot.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Of D and D. It's pretty cool though, Like I
love this premise that you are known as this amazing warrior,
but the reality is you're a bumbling buffoon, a total,
a total loser of bozo that got mrked with the
first arrow shot in the entire war. You just went
down immediately.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
It's a great premise for a game like this, Like
it's it's so good.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
And that's one of the cool things too, is when
you're in the interim levels in the Hall of Heroes,
when you collect the chalice, you go to the Hall
of Heroes to get your rewards. They're given to you
by the spirits of warriors that have fallen, actual great
warriors that fought alongside you, and some of them, you know,
they're like, oh wow, it's sir Dan, Oh my gosh,
I've heard of you. You were amazing. And you know,

(50:23):
Dan talks in this kind of muffled simlish I think
is how you put it to me.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Yeah. Yeah, he's like but almost like a Peanuts adult, you.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Know, yeah, kind of wow.

Speaker 6 (50:37):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Some of some of the spirits of the warriors here
see you for what you are. They know that you're
a has been, they know that you're a fraud, and
they just disrespect the shit out of you. It's it's
pretty funny. Uh And and Dan just takes it, you know,
He's like, ah, whatever, you know, and kind of I mean,
that's the appropriate response when people are talking shit, just.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, to walk away.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I kind of sounds like that one guy off of
that show Chowder that came like it was a little
a little after my time. But do you know what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
I know of the show Chowder. Yeah, I don't think
I know the specific character though he's the I think
I think Chowder was a little past my time too.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Yeah. Well yeah, I mean we're like the same age
world ripe Old Age of thirty two, but I'm a
little younger in that, but not by much. That's the
that's the story of medieval and going through each of
these levels, you I mean, you don't really complete the story.
It's just the story at the start is Zerok has returned.

(51:34):
Dan has come back from the dead, and you know,
you get to the end and you fight Xerok at
his castle, which we could talk about, but that's really it.
You know, that's the story. Well, that's the plot. The
story is what happens in the levels. Is that how
I phrase it in the Super Mario Wonder episode? I
can't remember.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
It's probably yeah, but yeah, it's very much trying to
be like the relatable kind of underdog story kind of
a thing where it's like you want to be the
great hero, but like you die immediately, but like they
cover it up to where, oh you are a hero
and then he comes back and is like, oh, oh
I'm the hero. Shit, I guess I got to be
the hero now, you know. And it's trying to like
make you get behind Sir Daniel as a character, you know,

(52:14):
and now I think it does a good job, like
I like him well enough, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, Yeah, it's fun. It's a lot of fun. The
levels themselves, there are a lot of them, way more
than I remembered arguably more than there should be. Oh
totally more than there should be. Like I mean, like
I said, man, I was done with this several levels
before it was time to quit. But they start off
leading you in with a very respectable difficulty curve, Like

(52:39):
they start off nice and easy and they give you
some challenges and it's all good. The spikes come a
little bit later, but I really I thought the beginning
of this game was really strong. The beginning. You start
off in Dan's crypt that's where you kind of learned
the game by reading these tones, talking to these gargoyles
that have fantastic voice fantastic Let me amend that fantastic

(53:02):
nineties voice acting.

Speaker 8 (53:04):
It has risen again, said Daniel Fort's cue. See the
Hero of Gallumbia who fell at.

Speaker 9 (53:14):
The first chart.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
The fog of war and the shrouds of time conspire
to turn the arrow fodder into the savior of the
day that we know it's better.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Oh yeah, I love the voice acting from this era
because you sometimes get like genuinely really good performances, but
most of the time it is people just just hamming
it up because these people making games back then didn't
really know how to properly like voice direct people, you know,
and probably a lot of the voice actors they were
using were like either doing like anime or you know,

(53:53):
were just you know, they were cheap talents, so it
was easy to kind of get them in and so
they would you know, be like, oh, get them from
the community theater. So they sometimes will get really hammy
and overact, you know, but.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Not like not my reading of the story, which was impeccable,
No yours is perfect.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
But but but it adds to a lot of the charm.
And with how this game is like meant to be
more kind of goofy and lighthearted, that sort of voice
acting perfectly fits. Like you don't want people taking this
too seriously. You know, you're not gonna get Meryl Streep
doing this. No, you're not gonna get Meryl Streep in
any video.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Speaking of perfectly fitting, let's let's take a listen to
some of these gargoyles telling us about Sir Dan.

Speaker 9 (54:32):
Look it alone.

Speaker 8 (54:34):
Fate has given it a second chance, a chance to
forget the ignoble truth, a chance to defeat Sarah and
live up to the legend. We hope it does well.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Great stuff right there, Oh, beautiful. I particularly like the
part that I liked because we just listened to it.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
That was a good part.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, yeah, we totally listened to that at the same
time as you did audience.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
I don't know. Yeah, let's talk about some of these levels.
The first level after Dan's Crypt is a graveyard. It's
pretty standard. There is a there's a couple parts to
the graveyard. I know that's not the proper name. Let
me let me look at this long play. Oh it's
not titled. I think it is just the graveyard, isn't it.
The graveyard followed by cemetery hill That's what I was
thinking of, And then that's followed by hilltop Mausoleum. That's

(55:25):
kind of a trio of levels that lead into the
first boss. Like, at least design wise, is far and
away my favorite. He's like a demon that's made out
of stained glass. That is so bad ass.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Yeah yeah, he yeah, that was that was real. Those
are really cool, like set up for that boss battle
and and yeah he wasn't like too difficult or anything,
but yeah, that was one of those where I'm like, oh,
this game may have some legs to it.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Yeah. I don't think any of the bosses reached reached
that height again. They really love they don't flip with
their best foot. I don't know, how did you like
the early parts of this game? What are some of
the levels that stood out to you?

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Let's see the ones I really liked. Were I quite enjoyed,
like the like the main Graveyard level because I think
it's one that you have to return to like at
least once or twice. Yeah, so it's cool to kind
of see that level kind of take on different sort
of like different identities as you go through it, like

(56:21):
getting new abilities. That one was pretty nice. Later on,
there's the Asylum Grounds, which is more of like kind
of the mazy level. I quite enjoyed that one.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Is that is the Asylum Grounds. Is that the one
where you have to go to the level with Jack
of the Green that gives you all the riddles?

Speaker 2 (56:40):
I think Jack of the Green sounds correct, yes, But
but I enjoyed that Hedge Maze like it had some
some slightly frustrating puzzles, but it was nice to see
like some different, uh game like a bit of a
gameplay change up at that point in the game. And
I just I don't know, I always like kind of
like Hedge mays or mazy type levels and games. Maybe
I'm just a weirdo, but I liked sort of the

(57:02):
different identity that that level kind of presented itself compared
to say, some of the other ones, particularly a lot
of the like the Pumpkin Gorge and Pumpkin Serpent levels,
which I was not too big of a fan of
those ones, but you know, we can get to that later.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
I thought the ghost Ship was cool.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
The ghost Ship was very cool. The maze level, I
want to go back to that real quick. The Asylum grounds.
You're dealing with this talking head on the wall, Jack
of the Green, who gets frustrated, as you saw his
riddles because he puts so much work into.

Speaker 9 (57:31):
Them, greeting so forth he his gill.

Speaker 5 (57:34):
My name is Jack of the Green. I am the
master of riddles, and this maze is my domain. You
are free to leave, but only ones who've answered for
riddles puzzles so fiendishly difficult, so perplexingly complex that no
man has ever solved them.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Which there is so difficult too, the first one, So
each of these, he's got his riddles for that you
have to see. To get out of this maze. The
first one that he gives you and he's like, you'll
never solve this one is.

Speaker 5 (58:06):
Nah, try my first riddle. At night. They come without
being fetched. By day, they are lost without being stolen.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
It's like that's baby's first riddle. That's stars.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
It's so easy and easy peasy.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
There are hedges in the shape of stars that you
just go around in this maze and hit, and then
you go back and talk to him, and then he'll
give you a couple more riddles. H And as you
solve each one, more of the maze is open to you.
The enemies are like hedges that spit fire at you.
There are these like, I don't know, on the PS one.

(58:44):
They all kind of just look like little guys, like
little fucked up guys, little demon.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Stuff like that's what I call them, little fucked up guys.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yeah, but that was cool. I did like this level.
I mentioned that I hated the antill level. I just
want to circle back to that real quick and talk
about why literally, because that's what I did in that
entire level is just constant circling ant hills. You know,
when you think of an ant hill and like the
tunnels underneath of it, you think of like amazing sprawling

(59:11):
turning tunnels, right, because that's what ants do, and that's
exactly what this level is, which in and of itself
wouldn't be bad, but one you don't have a map, which, okay, forgivable.
This is nineteen ninety eight, you know whatever. I mean,
it's forgivable, but it's in complete pitch black darkness. Your
only light are these two ferries that circle around you
and they light up the way as you walk. So

(59:34):
you're just getting lost constantly in this level and I
hate it. I hate it so much. Man. The ants
here are weirdly strong. They take like three whax of
your hammer to kill, and there's a lot of them
because it's a fucking ant hill. So I don't know.
This was like a perfect storm of things that pissed
me off, and I hated this level so much. And

(59:56):
the antan boss is weirdly really hard. She spits at
you and it takes off like a third of your health.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, like you lose, like you're such a like a
little weakling the whole game. I mean, it kind of
fits with Daniel's character and being like a skeleton, but
it just feels like your health you just it can
just drain so fast from just a few like simple
mistakes that are just kind of common when you're playing
any type of game like this, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Yeah, speaking of the legend of Zelda influence, this has
what is basically the heart system, you know, as if
you explore more and try to complete the game properly,
you'll find more heart. Not heart, but health bottles life bottles,
I think they're called, and they function like parts. Whenever
your health bar is depleted, it fills up and one

(01:00:43):
of the bottles empties. There are these like green vitality
springs that look like goo that come up out of
the ground in every level and you can stand in
them for the wi You can stand in them for
a while and they make a really satisfying sound as
they fill up your health bar and fill your life bottles.
That's a total life saver. Your pardon that terrible pun.

(01:01:06):
It's they're really good.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
It's accurate.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
It is accurate. They do deplete too, so like you
can't just fill up every bottle you have plus your
health they run out. I don't know how long. It's generous,
but they do run out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Yeah, yeah, they were definitely life savers as you would
point it out, and I think, man, that I didn't
get that. I mean, I couldn't think of a better
way to describe I wasn't able to find that many
of them. But I guess that was just me like
not searching enough to find them. I think I got
like I think at one point I had like five
or five of them maybe, which was helpful, but I

(01:01:42):
think it was only like half of it, so I'm like,
I don't know where the hell these other half are.
So but I was playing this on emulator, so I
was saved scumming quite a bit, to be fair, that's
I'm not ashamed of it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I my two favorite levels in this are kind of
back back I really liked. Well, my favorite level is
Scarecrow Fields. I think that one, far and away was
the one that I had the most fun with, even
if the Scarecrow enemies are kind of pains, like they
don't die very easily and they sick bats on you,
which are some of the most annoying enemies.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
I liked the was it like the little gremlins that
were controlling those robots like those just because I was like,
that's weird. But but I can vibe to it. You know,
they're very easy to and they're very easy to be
once you figure it out.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
The thing that was weird about this was there's a
sign that says, like, you know, there's some kind of
a monster in the in the cornfield, like don't don't
step it, don't stay in there too long, which is true.
If you step into the cornfield, one you move really slowly,
so you can't get out very easily. But two, this
dark little imp that you can't see like rushes you
and it's an instant ko if he touches you just

(01:02:53):
and then I looked death and I learned that the
hard way. Oh me too. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
I was like, this sucks. But if you're able to
avoid that part, the rest of the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Levels not really that that big of a deal. At
least I didn't think it was that big of a deal.
Like the there weren't too many enemies like swarming you.
It was pretty easy to kind of navigate. And yeah,
it had it almost had like a Wizard of Oz
quality too, And I don't know what it is. Some
about cornfields always reminds me of Wizard of Oz. Yeah, yeah,
I could see that the sleeping village that comes right after.

(01:03:27):
I mean, you have to find like the the crux
of this is finding a bunch of items that let
you get out of the its. It's a scavenger hunt
kind of a level with like yeah, puzzles to figure
out how the pieces go together. But all of the
well not all, but most of the enemies here are
people that have been just taken over by the evil spirits,
and you're not supposed to kill them because they're like
they're real people, they're normal people. They make hilarious sounds

(01:03:51):
when they're oh yeah, like I know the game. I
don't know if it was the game specifically or if
it was like retro achievements, but it got mad at
me when I stopped one of the kids, because like
there was a kid, like the little little devil kids
who come out and try to like poke you, and
they're like really fast, like by instinct, I smashed one
of them, and I think I got a retro achievement
that was like even the even the children or something.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
I forget what it was called.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
I don't know if you use retro achievements, but they
can make some of these games really really entertaining.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Well, another thing in this level that kind of dates
this game is after like halfway through the level, enemies
will come in that you can kill, and you're supposed
to kill, but they're like Russian troops, like Russian troopers
with guns.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I think I remember those.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, that kind of puts this game
in the nineties when people were still like, well, I mean,
I guess it's kind of comeback what with Trump and Putin, but.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
America loves to view Russia as the big bad guy,
which I've never honestly fully understood. But that's another podcast,
It's true, not this one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yeah, I don't know, Like I kind of like the
levels lessons I'm went on, but I think part of
that is just I was getting a little tired of
it and it was wearing out its welcome a little bit.
I don't really have like a ton to say about
the ending ones. The uh what's that what's that one
where the I think it's like the marshlands or like, uh,
the swampy area where the enemies are kind of coming

(01:05:18):
out of the swamp.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
And I think it's called the Pools of the Ancient Dead.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yes, Pools of the Ancient Dead. That is exactly the lot.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Yeah, Yeah, that one was kind of I mean, it
was cool to have like the rain effect in there,
and I'm like, oh, that rain effect looked like when
the when the g TA Trilogy came out, Like the
rain looked like that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 6 (01:05:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
I don't know, like I feel bad. I there's a
part of me that feels like we're not given this
game it's due. But also there's there's not a ton here. Uh,
I don't have any other levels that I was like
really jazzed to talk about.

Speaker 9 (01:05:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
It was really like I wanted to shit on the
anthill and then talk about the cool stuff with the
scarecrow uh and stuff like Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
I again, I liked the the ghost Ship. I thought
that one was kind of a neat level. For some reason,
it remind me a little bit of some of the
more platformy parts. Reminded me of pac Man World.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
I don't know why I could see it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
And then yeah, there was like that weird like train
level near the end of the game where it's like
you're trying to like, guy the little train on the tracks.
That one was interesting. I thought, like it like it
does try to do some more interesting stuff near the
end of the game, but I feel like it doesn't
pace out that interesting stuff enough to really keep you captivated,

(01:06:34):
you know, because I think the middle part of the
game is a bit of a slog, you know, where
you just kind of do the same thing over a
handful of levels. So by the time it does start
to get a little bit interesting near the end of
the game, it's like, ah, I'm kind of over it,
you know, you kind of lost me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
There are also a couple of Gauntlet levels that are
just series of enemy rushes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
I hated those levels.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Those were my least favorite I mean this game because
I just I'm not a huge fan of the game's combat.
So yeah, doing that kind of rush thing, it's like,
I don't want to do it, you know. I mean,
if you have to pick, get it. If you have
to pick something as this game's strong suit, it's probably uh,
I mean some it's either visuals or exploration. It's not

(01:07:16):
combat though, So like those levels were a real drag.
There's only like two of them, which, you know, good
for them for realizing and I guess, but they're long. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
I feel like if this game was more of a
pure platformer like a Mario, then like then like an
action of venture, hack and slash thing, it probably would
have worked more in its favor, Like if it favored
like platforming challenges, solving puzzles, exploring more than combat, it
probably would have helped. Yeah, I think I think that
last qualifier more than combat is good. Like I like

(01:07:46):
the combat being there. I just I agree with you.
I think the scales are just a little imbalanced.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
Now, you said you played Medieval two back in the day.
I mean, we could talk about that later if you want.
But I think you told me it was better than
this one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Well I remember it being better. I haven't actually played it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
I mean I hope it is. It's a sequel.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
So the main things I remember about that game is
you get guns. The Blunderbuss and the gatling gun are
like two of the weapons you get pretty early on
you Aready. The first big boss battle is a Triceratops
skeleton or noah, not a try, sir?

Speaker 6 (01:08:21):
Is it a tri serahtops?

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Yeah, a tri Seratops skeleton in a museum. A key
mechanic of that game is Dan takes his head off
and puts it on a hand like a walking hand
that you can see in these levels and you like
kind of explore that way, and it opens up with
this obnoxiously British ghost that this is My friends and
I would just yell this at each other all throughout

(01:08:42):
high school. He like appears and he yells, Sir Daniel
full askew back from the dead once again, Sir Daniel.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
Full escuw back from the date once a game.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
And I'm sure that was a perfect imitation. I'm sure
that there are no notes. But that's how you British.
I love your British accent. Zat Rocky is up to
no good. It's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
It's fun to do British. It's like money Python almost.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
There's a shout run it out. There's one. There's one
of the heroes in the Hall Hall of Heroes has
like this bizarre amalgamation accent of like Spanish, but it's
like it's very clearly it's it's like Spanish but also
Russian a little bit too. Like they were just what

(01:09:31):
I wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
Interesting, that's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Oh, it's crazy. It's crazy. You wanna you wanta do
some accents on the show. You want to you want
to let loose with all of our raunchiest and most
cancelable accents.

Speaker 8 (01:09:46):
This is all I've got.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
I'm not dead yet, That's all I got. I'm good. Yeah,
me too. Yeah, we're not no canceling us. We're good boys.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
It's not even it's not even that. It's just I'm
not prepared. You're not prepared.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Proper accent, not prepared. You give me a day and
I'm coming out here like Michael Scott. I'm swinging.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
I do a really good Ohio accent. You can you
can hear it right now. It's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
I've been hearing it this whole time. Every so often,
the Pittsburgh slips out of me, like whenever I say
vowels like house and like sometimes it comes out as house.
But it's like I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
That's okay, who likes Pittsburgh anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Yeah, man, I mean that's kind of medieval. I mean
you get to the end of the game. Uh, you
get to Xerox's lair. It's you kind of do three
boss battles in a row.

Speaker 6 (01:10:49):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
It starts. It starts kind of cool. You fight some
of his undead army and the chalice. The chalice is
you've been collecting the souls that you've been collect in
the chalice, they kind of come out to help you.
So it's like two little ghost armies fighting each other
with Dan running around causing problems for everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Yeah yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Cool, minds me a little reminds me a little bit
of a like Phantom Menace when like jar Jar is
running around the droids are fighting each other.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Yeah. Yeah, Dan's not as lovable as jar Jar binks.
Speaking of bad accents. The once you win against these,
they make amazing little sounds as they're fading away. But
your second fight is like he said, he's going to
unleash one of his fiercest demons or something onto you,

(01:11:40):
and it looks kind of like Odin like in Final
Fantasy games, like there's like a demon horse and a
demon riding a devil horse or something, and it looks
like it's gonna be really tough, but it's just kind
of not.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Yeah, it was shockingly easy, which surprised me. Actually, like
it relieved to me as well, because there are some
parts of this game that were really frustrating, but it
was it was just so weird to see like a
final boss be this difficult, especially one that like you know,
as a callback looks like a soul's boss, Like that's yeah,

(01:12:14):
straight up a dark soul style boss, you know. But
you just just go up and just whack the shit
out of him, and he goes down pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
But then you fight Xeroq like as a last titch effort,
and they like they choose to add in some humor here,
which I wasn't expecting, but it really worked for me.
Like Xarok goes into his back room and he says,
I'm gonna find the spell to take care of you,
and you just hear a chicken boxing and he's like,
oh no, no, not that one.

Speaker 9 (01:12:38):
Where is that spell?

Speaker 6 (01:12:40):
Ah?

Speaker 9 (01:12:41):
Yes, no, not that spell.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
And then you you hear more chickens boxing and he's.

Speaker 9 (01:12:51):
Like, oh, oh, not right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
And then he comes out as like this giant fucking
like lizard with his head on it and he's like,
now I've got you, and then he clucks like a chicken.
I'll put it in here. Uh yeah, It's like I
was not expecting it to be funny. He hits like
a truck though. He does like your health I think

(01:13:23):
if it's full has three hundred HP and if he
touches you it does like an immediate one hundred points
of damage, so like he could take you down.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Yeah, But basically if you just if you just run
around like as best as you can to just try
to like like try to get behind him and slash
him a couple of times, you'll be just fine. But
but it's easy to die from him quite a few times,
especially when he can just kind of charge you pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Once you beat him, though, he you know, has his
little yelling, final boss yelling no sort of moment, and
then piece of rubble falls and squishes him with a
little squeaky toy noise again like they're they're being funny
here at the end.

Speaker 6 (01:14:06):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
And that's very very Warner Brothers.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
And that's it. The castle starts to collapse. There's a
cut scene of Dan escaping, and then Dan gets his
reward in UH in Valhalla, this game's version of Valhalla.
He lays down to sleep. He's back in the Hall
of Heroes. He does a big old summer set a summersault.
Excuse me, a summer Set's a place in Pennsylvania where
the planes crashed.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
He does, he does, he does a summer salt in summerset.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yeah, and they never did find all the records. He
does a he does a summersault off of the table.
He like gets his wine. Everybody claps, and he gets
his hero's reward, and that's that's the ending to Medieval.
It's a it's a fun little game. I probably won't
revisit it anytime soon. I had. I had a feeling
like when I started, I was like, I know, I'm
not going to get to the remake. Maybe after I

(01:14:54):
I record the episode, I'll play the play the remake.
I don't really want to, like I I just don't.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
But yes, the reviews I saw of the remake were
it didn't do a lot to improve on some of
the weird control from the original, which is like really
interesting to me. Because it had been like twenty years
since the original. You think they would have tried to
smooth some of that stuff out, But I guess they
didn't as much as people would have liked, just at

(01:15:20):
least that's from the reviews I read.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Just even if you're going to keep the hack and
slash like mash X to attack, that's fine. Just let
me lock on with R one. That's all I want.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
Yeah, Yeah, a lockow would make some of the stuff
a lot easier.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's like my number one complaint here,
And they could have done that for the remake, And
to be fair, that's the one thing I mentioned before,
maybe they did. I don't remember that. I only played
the first level and really only used the sword, So
maybe they did do that. And if they did, well,
I'll eat crow. But you know, if they didn't, that's
a major, major A skeleton of a crow. Yeah yeah,

(01:15:58):
that's metal.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, the remake. It was developed by
a company called Other Ocean Interactive, and they have an
interesting collection of games to their name. They they made
such such classics as a Dark Void zero on the
DSi where which is actually a really cool game. They

(01:16:20):
did a lot of like phone stuff early in their days,
like yeah, like a lot of phone games, and then
kind of moved into making some like stuff for the
switch and like the three DS and all that. But
it feels like the Medieval remake was probably like the
biggest thing they did as far as like project size
is concerned. So interesting that they were selected for that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Yeah, that is weird. I'm looking at this now, like
South Park, Tenorman's Revenge and a super Monkey Ball the
All Time classic.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
They ported Costume Quest two to the Wii. I mean,
I like Costume Quest too, but I'm sure the weed
report's just fine.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
Sure, I'll take your I'll take your word for it. Yeah,
but I mean that's Medievil. Maybe we'll do Medieval too
on the show one day. I mean, I'm open to it.
Not anytime soon, but who knows. I forget if we
said this upfront, this was voted on by the patrons.
They chose this, so this was thanks to them. I

(01:17:18):
enjoyed revisiting your fault. Yeah, I'm just kidding. I enjoyed
revisiting it. If you wanted to pick up Medieval four
PS one, the first one. The complete price, the CIB price,
which is a little higher than what I paid, is
currently fifty one twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
That is higher than I expected it today.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Oh yeah, loose it's about twenty seven bucks. But is
it retro game collecting so great?

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
Yeah, it sure is. I saw a Blue Sky post
a tweet the other other day that somebody was reposting
their own posts where they said they found their copy
of wind Waker. You're like, I'm so excited to play it,
and they reposted and quoted themselves and they're like, this
is the only hobby where you have to pay one
hundred bucks to play a twenty year old game. It's like, yep,

(01:18:06):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
There are ways around it if you're tech savvy enough.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
But but I can't look at ISOs on my shelf.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
True. True. Funnily enough, my copy of Windwaker.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
I bought it like over ten years ago, and I
kept the receipt for it, and it's cib it is
in beautiful shape.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
I paid thirty bucks for it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
That's the way to go. I wish I didn't get.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Rid of all of my old shit, just the way
it goes, unfortunately, So yeah, I regret selling all my
Sega Saturn stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
But that's Medieval for you. Check it out. It is
definitely worth checking out, especially if you were a fan
of the PlayStation's lineage. You could do a lot, a
lot worse than Medieval.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
Oh yeah you could.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
It's It's a It's a charming little game for its time.
I see why it has the cult following that it has.
But to people who would want to play it, don't
feel like you have to beat it. I don't think
it's a game that like you have to beat to
feel like you experienced. I think if you put a
few hours in a go yeah, I'm good, then I

(01:19:06):
think you're all right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
It's not a game you have to see to the
very end.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Yeah, And it's not the best game that this this
dev studio made in my opinion, because they've made a
couple other games that I like more.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
Now Thhak, you are returning guests to the show. You
are co host of the three Do podcast, and if
memory serves you were the one that came up with
the three Do podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
It was not me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
It was all Bill. Bill does all the work. I
just show up and shoot the shit.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
That Bill tells a different story as to how it
came to be, But well he created it. I resurrected it.
Oh true. True, that's true. That's true either way. You
are a co host of the three Do podcast, which is,
as far as I'm aware, the only active three Do,
the only active three DO centric podcast that is going

(01:19:59):
on right now, all about number one in the world,
all about the three DO console from the nineties. So
if you would like to tell listeners a little bit
about three d Oh. What three D podcast has been
up to lately. If you've released anything recently, now is
the time to do it, so let's hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Well, The three D Podcast is me and my buddy
Bill talking about the three d Oh. So it is
a long forgotten console from the nineties that Bill had
originally done made the show for because he discovered quite
a fascination for the system. Most of the time we
just review a game that was on the system. We've

(01:20:38):
been trying to bring more guests into the show. You
might see Rick from Pixel Project Radio on there at
some point in the future, just to try to like
educate people on this weird little system.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
And it's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
I mean, I bought a three d I've been collecting
games for it, and I hope you all listen because
it is a fascinating point in gaming history that I
think more people should know about. As I've mentioned before,
I am fascinated by gaming history, so why not educate
people as best as I can.

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):
So it's a good time. Y'all should listen to it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
It is part of the super Pod Network, which is
a big conglomerate of podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
That I'm on.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
When I first bought my three D O, I have
the f Z ten model, the kind that has the
pop open lid that doesn't mechanically fail as often as
the cooler looking VCR style. But when I first bought it,
I have. I told my manager about it because you know,
we were just chatting. We're close, and I told her
about it, and we spent some time on the call

(01:21:38):
just looking up the three D history together, and she
was very She laughed very hard when she found out
that it was very prevalent in Japan with adult video games.
She thought that was very funny.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
Well, we did do an episode on many of the
adult games that games are in quotes on that system,
so free to check that episode out. I will never
top my intro to that episode.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
You can find links to the three D podcast and
to their socials in the episode description. You can also
find and I suggest that you check them out. You
can also find links to our stuff in there as well.
Please consider joining the discord if you would like to
follow us on socials, Blue Sky, Instagram. I do make
reels on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok now, so you can

(01:22:27):
follow us there and if you're so inclined. Check out
the Patreon where you can get our schedule in advance.
You can get special bonus episodes, and if you're like me,
you can just support creators you like. You can do
that in their ratings and reviews are always appreciated. It's
been a long time since I've read one on the show,
just because I felt like stopping. But we have got

(01:22:48):
some in and they help us in the algorithm. Give
us a rating, honest one if you'd like, although I
like it when they're five stars. You could do that
on whatever platform you choose. We're at the end of
the episode, so I've got to thank you once again, Thrack.
Thanks for joining me, Thanks for letting me relive some
of my childhood on the show. Oh no problem.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Thank you for having me, and hopefully we can we
can do this again. Maybe maybe we'll pick a game
that has a little bit more substance to it as well,
so we can maybe get closer to our lost Odyssey heights.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
You know, absolutely, that's the stuff that I like to do. Listeners,
thank you as well, Thank you for sticking around. As always,
I'm your host, I am Rick. We're signing off for now.
We'll catch you next time. Take care.

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An Unlikely Hero | MediEvil (Ep. 136)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}An Unlikely Hero | MediEvil (Ep. 136)